Upper Darby School District seeking input during budget process

By VINCE SULLIVAN

Thursday, February 21, 2013

UPPER DARBY -- A year after thousands of parents and community members voiced their opposition to a drastic change in curriculum due to budget constraints, the Upper Darby School District has partnered with the University of Pennsylvania to gather input from residents about this year's budget process.

A series of four public forums held over the next few weeks will solicit the thoughts of taxpayers in the district. The first will be held from 10 a.m. until noon Feb. 27 at the Watkins Senior Center. Others will follow at different locations and different times of day.

The Penn Project for Civic Engagement has been working with the district over the last several months to set up a framework for seeking public input about expenditures for the 2013-2014 school year. Last spring, a plan to realign class offerings in the arts was met with vehement protest from thousands of residents, which culminated with a petition drive and demonstrations at the state capitol in Harrisburg. This year, administrators hope to give a voice to stakeholders from all aspects of the school district.

"The whole idea here is that the school district is faced with difficult choices," said Upper Darby School District's Business Manager Ed Smith. "The district is trying to get some community input."

The project is being coordinated by Dr. Harris Sokoloff from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. Through the Penn Project for Civic Engagement, a program of the Penn Center for Educational Leadership, Sokoloff and his team have created a timeline for the project that will give community members four opportunities to have their concerns heard by the school board and administrators. The board approved payments of $28,752 to the Penn Project to administer the program.

This will also give taxpayers a glimpse into the budget process and the sometimes difficult steps that must be undertaken to provide for the education of Upper Darby's children.

"Our goal is for the residents at large to become better informed of the budget choices facing the district and to become more involved in those choices," Sokoloff said. "We want the school district to become more aware of the underlying concerns of the community."

The widening of communications channels between the two groups will better serve each of them in new ways. During last year's budget debate, school board meetings were packed to the gills with people fighting for the restoration of arts education in the district, which Sokoloff thinks was a great example of community engagement. He believes this year's process will help ensure that all viewpoints are heard, enabling those with special interests to see how spending can affect different segments of the population differently.

"The taxpayers will understand how these choices will effect not only themselves, but other people with different circumstances elsewhere in the district."

An advisory group of community members was formed in December to help increase the project's exposure and to hear initial concerns from members of the community. With a preliminary budget showing a $169 million spending plan, and an 8.7 percent tax increase to balance it, public awareness about the reasons for the increase will help to foster understanding for the budget process. The advisory group is tasked with increasing public engagement on the budget so that more will be gained from the public forums.

"A very important piece of our fight last year was community activism, and I am overjoyed that this year we can have a more open effort at transparency to the public at the local level," Colleen Kennedy, the founder of Save Upper Darby Arts, a grassroots organization that fought for the restoration of funding last spring, said in an emailed statement.

Kennedy is also a member of the advisory group for the Penn Project.

"There will have to be a massive effort by all within the Upper Darby community to retrieve funds (from the state) we rightfully deserve for our children, but it should not be underestimated that these local budget advisory hearings are critical to our success in protecting the best in offered programs at UDSD."

Residents will have the chance to give input about where money should be spent and where it should be cut. Sokoloff and his team will then analyze the data and present it to the school board.

"The board will have the final say," Smith said.

Smith believes this will help open the eyes of the public about the tough choices that administrators and elected officials are forced to make each year when budget time rolls around.

"This process will help the community to understand that there are no easy answers. There will be pain," Smith said. "The question is how to spread that pain and how to limit its impact on the educational program of the district."

Sokoloff said the early stages of the project have gone smoothly, with the district providing plenty of information about spending and the advisory group energetically drumming up interest in the forums.

"My goal would be for the board to come up with a budget and for the community to, whether they're happy or not, understand why the choices were made," Sokoloff said.